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Ask HN: I'm about to launch my startup, should I charge in dollars?

1 points by robotmay 13y ago

I'm almost ready to properly launch my one-man startup; I'm just setting up the company at the moment (which is a new experience for me). I'm based in the UK, the site's hosted in the EU, and I have the opportunity to charge in GBP, EUR, or USD via Stripe; which should I use? Do US users hesitate when they see a price in pounds? I know a few UK startups (like Pusher) which bill in dollars but I want to know of any pitfalls that could entail. I'm afraid this is a bit out of my regular experience, so I'd love any tips from others who have gone through this.

lakey 13y ago
Who is your target market? How / where will you market the product? Can't you do both via geo-targeting?
- robotmay 13y ago
  Stripe only lets me choose one currency for an account, as far as I know. The target market is everywhere! I didn't want to plug it above, but it's a new photography community which you can currently see in beta: https://photographer.io https://photographer.io. I have some really active users in the UK, EU, USA, Australia, and some great photos from someone in Senegal right now. I suppose I could always display a different currency but always bill in one, though that then involves fiddling with conversion rates.
  - lakey 13y ago
    Nice build - promising. I'm in the UK but quite happy to pay for something in dollars. I don't think it works quite so well the other way around. Ultimately Stripe needs to build out its features, unless there is a hack of some kind to look into (http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-paid-memberships-pro-quick-hack-for-canadian-dollars-in-stripe http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-paid-memberships-p...). It's a very saturated market. Have you got a clear plan of attack, as far as the marketing goes?
    - robotmay 13y ago
      Thanks! If you use it and have any feedback then I'd be really happy to hear it. Aye there are quite a few other sites out there, and I really need to flesh out a page explaining how Photographer.io is different and why you should use it. I'm banking a lot on there being other people out there like me: * I want large images on a photo site (can't believe nobody else is really doing this) * Usage limits/subscriptions should be fair * It should be heavily customisable so I can find the photos I enjoy * It should give me a lot of privacy options * It shouldn't have a million inane comments under every photo * New users should be able to get their photos seen * Photos should be ranked fairly and adapt to prevent popular people taking all the top spots I've got a good start (I think) on a lot of those points, though it's obviously far from done. It's also, AFAIK, the only site served entirely over SSL; though I'm not sure how many people care about that :D I kinda want to position it as the Pinboard.in of photo sites, if that makes sense. I'm not looking to end up with a huge staff; I really just want people to enjoy finding great new photos.
      - lakey 13y ago
        Plenty of good ideas there. Are you aiming at the more serious photographer? You could ban iPhone pics! I think it's key to understand what people will pay for, and where the gaps are on competitor sites. You'll have more clue than me about all that. I used to pay for Flickr, but I lapsed and it felt like a shakedown to have to pay to be able to access my pictures. Left a bad taste. I understand the model, but between that and all of the Yahoo integration I got fed up with it. However I now use Imgur a lot and recently went 'Pro', though it is mainly for screenshots and image hosting, as opposed to decent quality photos. The key, in terms of marketing, is to either have a brilliant story or brilliant content (or both). If you have the former then the latter follows naturally. Your content is largely the photos, but I think you should take some ownership over content creation - a blog is a no brainer and could be crucial for your SEO and social efforts. There are plenty of things you can do on the user experience front, though you've made a great start on that score. The detail matters. For example, I'd use synonyms on the homepage for 'fantastic image', just to mix it up. The ranking algorithm is always a fun thing to work out, and experiment with.
jaachan 13y ago
Being from the EU, I've got the idea that most people are pretty attached to their currency. I'm guessing it depends a bit on your market - some people (global-minded?) have no problem doing currency conversion, others do (nationally-minded?). For a company selling a downloadable program, I had to modify their website so it could sell in these three currencies (EUR, GBP, USD). Since they have no official presence there, I presume it was feelgood only. I suppose the question is not "should you" but "can you afford to". If you can make it so, reaching out to the customer, "speaking" in their own currency, is always a benefit. Edit: If you /need/ to pick one, pick the one were you expect the most revenue? I don't think anyone of them are less hesitant about it than others. Save for maybe EU people since they might remember the good ol' days of the Mark and the Franc and such.
- robotmay 13y ago
  That's the problem I'm facing at the moment; each currency would be relevant to a certain section of my current user base. Plenty of users in the USA, about the same in the UK and EU, and a sizeable number in Australia too. I'm not sure if Stripe incurs extra charges for using non-native currencies; I've tried looking through their docs but the UK documentation is a little sparse right now.
chrisdew 13y ago
Be careful of Stripe, if you're in the UK. You currently need a US bank account to charge in dollars. They are looking at multi-currency, but it's not available yet. You can charge in multiple currencies - they advised setting up multiple Stripe accounts.
- robotmay 13y ago
  Aaah, that would make sense; there's so little documentation for UK users at the moment that I wasn't sure if something like that was the case. So I'm assuming I can only charge in GBP or EUR with a UK bank account?

robotmay 13y ago

Hehe, I did consider blocking phone pictures, but some people get some great shots on them and I don't want to miss out on those. I've even managed a few rare half-decent ones: https://photographer.io/p/10 https://photographer.io/p/10 I think most people are actually pretty happy to pay for increased usage limits and the like, though I don't want that to be the only boon. I'm also trying to keep it to one subscription level, as I think the tiered plans on some other sites can make subscribers of the cheaper plans feel less important than those on the higher ones. I definitely don't want to go down the Flickr route of blocking ex-subscribers from their photos. I'll likely just prevent new uploads in that case. Imgur is great and I think there's scope for that ease-of-use in the more photographer-oriented market. My uploader at the moment is a bit basic, but I'm working on improving that. A blog is definitely coming; I've been really lax in getting it set up. I'll definitely have one for launch. I also really need to do some SEO work, as I've done very little so far :D In the past few days I've finally gotten to the point where I'm happy to do GUI work. It's weird; I have a degree in design, but I always feel like it's wasted time until I have all the important backend work done. I know that's not true, but it's why the design definitely needs some work right now. I'll be working on this quite a lot over the next few weeks! The rankings gave me a great excuse to play with Redis sorted sets. At the moment it's very simplistic and I don't think it'll scale very well with lots of new users, so I'll be adjusting that. It's really enjoyable to fiddle with though :)

lakey 13y ago
These things take time! A blog will help with SEO and provide fodder for your social media feeds. Consider the kind of content you'd create. The question to ask is what would appeal to your target audience (I'd avoid making the blog all about your product). If time is tight then, curation beats creation. I like the idea of one price fits all product. You should try to bill annually, but experiment with sales psychology (you could price it monthly, for example). Imgur - the tools are so useful. I wanted to support it, as much as I wanted the extra features I ended up paying for. Much to learn. That lovely right click menu... You're right about prioritising how it works over how it looks. The GUI stuff is fun, and you will no doubt iterate the design as you go along. Good luck with the roll out!